I get irrationally sad and moody towards the end of August, when summer is clearly over. I can get teary-eyed watching kids play freely one last time before school starts, and I can’t stop complaining about the days getting shorter already because I know what’s coming next—several months of cold weather, darkness, layers of clothes, and a general feeling of discomfort for people like me who love higher temperatures.

But strangely enough, November doesn’t faze me. I know what to expect. It’s a miserable month with two dark and solemn holidays, dark, gloomy weather, and nagging unachieved ambitions getting surreptitiously postponed to the new year or far away in time because nothing gets accomplished in November, ever.

November is depressing but predictably so. Hey, this is a redeemable quality—”exactly as advertised, plan accordingly.”And for November 11, I did. There was no point in staying in Nantes on Remembrance Day because there was nothing to do, so I took the train to Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie. Going to the beach at the end of August feels like a last goodbye but rediscovering it on a warm November day is like winning the lottery. Bonus beach time!

I wasn’t crazy enough to go swimming or surfing. I’ll leave it to the crazy locals, the water was cold!

The light was amazing, though, and it was busier than I thought. The French are social animals, we like to get depressed and complain together, outside!